The English Utopia. A L Morton 1952
The land
Of sun and sucking pigs
And lust made light
Is poor man’s heaven.
Ah there the sweet, white water
Turns wine on tongue
Wind’s tongue is tied
And man’s
Tunes only to delight.
Light lie on glebe
Men’s bones, and stones
Bear the back’s burden softly
And a rounded-image.
Man grows with time
In grace and gentleness,
Takes nature’s mould
And nature his.
Subject and object fused
Race madly up to unimagined glory.
Cut cakes remain,
And the roast goose delights with gesture’s garnish.
So the old poet,
Mocked by philosophy six hundred years,
And by Jehovah’s curse on bread and brow.
And all the while
Plough turned and racketing loom
And toil grew tall
And all man’s fate was darkness.
To the sound of the sirens in the morning
Man goeth forth to his labours,
While the fountains of honey gush heavily,
Forgotten in Cokaygne’s green dream.
In the idle delight that had grown
To seem foolishness in the earth’s sight.
Till he awoke to Hammersmith and a fine morning
And a world washed white,
And the long night railed over
And Cokaygne’s delight not idleness
But toil new taught, turned and made light.
I give below the complete text of The Land of Cokaygne in a modernised verse form. The only merit that I can claim for it as verse is that of as close fidelity to the original as is compatible with preserving its structure and rhyme scheme. Rather more than half of the original text is to be found in The Cambridge Book of Prose and Verse: for a complete version the reader has to go to such places as Maetzner’s Altenglische Sprachproben or to Hickes’ Thesaurus. So far as I know no version in modern English has ever been printed. I believe that many readers will find such a version convenient, because, while the original text does not present any insurmountable difficulties, its language has a strangeness which might stand between the reader and a proper understanding of the poem.
Out to sea, far west of Spain,
Lies the land men call Cokaygne.
No land that under heaven is,
For wealth and goodness comes near this;
Though Paradise is merry and bright
Cokaygne is a fairer sight.
For what is there in Paradise
But grass and flowers and greeneries?
Though there is joy and great delight,
There’s nothing good but fruit to bite,
There’s neither hall, bower nor bench,
And only water thirst to quench.
And of men there are but two,
Elijah and Enoch also;
Sadly thither would I come
Where but two men have their home.
In Cokaygne we drink and eat
Freely without care and sweat,
The food is choice and clear the wine,
At fourses and at supper time,
I say again, and I dare swear,
No land is like it anywhere,
Under heaven no land like this
Of such joy and endless bliss.
There is many a sweet sight,
All is day, there is no night,
There no quarrelling nor strife,
There no death, but endless life;
There no lack of food or cloth,
There no man or woman wroth.
There no serpent, wolf or fox,
Horse or nag or cow or ox,
Neither sheep nor swine nor goat,
Nor creeping groom, I'd have you note,
Neither stallion there nor stud.
Other things you'll find are good.
In bed or garment or in house,
There’s neither flea nor fly nor louse.
Neither thunder, sleet nor hail,
No vile worm nor any snail,
Never a storm, nor rain nor wind,
There’s no man or woman blind.
All is sporting, joy and glee,
Lucky the man that there may be.
There are rivers broad and fine
Of oil, milk, honey and of wine;
Water serveth there no thing
But for sight and for washing.
Many fruits grow in that place
For all delight and sweet solace.
There is a mighty fine Abbey,
Thronged with monks both white and grey,
Ah, those chambers and those halls!
All of pasties stand the walls,
Of fish and flesh and all rich meat,
The tastiest that men can eat.
Wheaten cakes the shingles all,
Of church, of cloister, bower and hall.
The pinnacles are fat puddings,
Good food for princes or for kings.
Every man takes what he will,
As of right, to eat his fill.
All is common to young and old,
To stout and strong, to meek and bold.
There is a cloister, fair and light,
Broad and long, a goodly sight.
The pillars of that place are all
Fashioned out of clear crystal,
And every base and capital
Of jaspar green and red coral.
In the garth there stands a tree
Pleasant truly for to see.
Ginger and cyperus the roots,
And valerian all the shoots,
Choicest nutmegs flower thereon,
The bark it is of cinnamon.
The fruit is scented gillyflower,
Of every spice is ample store.
There the roses, red of hue,
And the lovely lily, too,
Never fade through day and night,
But endure to please men’s sight.
In that Abbey are four springs,
Healing and health their water brings,
Balm they are, and wine indeed,
Running freely for men’s need,
And the bank about those streams
With gold and with rich jewels gleams.
There is sapphire and uniune,
Garnet red and astiune,
Emerald, ligure and prassiune,
Beryl, onyx, topasiune,
Amethyst and chrystolite,
Chalcedony and epetite. [1]
There are birds in every bush,
Throstle, nightingale and thrush,
Woodpecker and the soaring lark,
More there are than man may mark,
Singing with all their merry might,
Never ceasing day or night.
Yet this wonder add to it –
That geese fly roasted on the spit,
As God’s my witness, to that spot,
Crying out, ‘Geese, all hot, all hot!’
Every goose in garlic drest,
Of all food the seemliest.
And the larks that are so couth
Fly right down into man’s mouth,
Smothered in stew, and thereupon
Piles of powdered cinnamon.
Every man may drink his fill
And needn’t sweat to pay the bill.
When the monks go in to mass,
All the windows that were glass,
Turn them into crystal bright
To give the monks a clearer light;
And when the mass has all been said,
And the mass-books up are laid,
The crystal pane turns back to glass,
The very way it always was.
Now the young monks every day
After dinner go to play,
No hawk not any bird can fly
Half so fast across the sky
As the monk in joyous mood
In his wide sleeves and his hood.
The Abbot counts it goodly sport
To see his monks in haste depart,
But presently he comes along
To summon them to evensong.
The monks refrain not from their play,
But fast and far they flee away,
And when the Abbot plain can see
How all his monks inconstant flee,
A wench upon the road he'll find,
And turning up her white behind,
He beats upon it as a drum
To call his monks to vespers home.
When the monks behold that sport
Unto the maiden all resort,
And going all the wench about,
Every one stroketh her white toute.
So they end their busy day
With drinking half the night away,
And so to the long tables spread
In sumptuous procession tread.
Another Abbey is near by,
In sooth, a splendid nunnery,
Upon a river of sweet milk,
Where is plenteous store of silk.
When the summer day is hot
The younger nuns take out a boat,
And forth upon the river clear,
Some do row and some do steer.
When they are far from their Abbey,
They strip them naked for their play,
And, plunging in the river’s brim,
Slyly address themselves to swim.
When the young monks see that sport,
Straightway thither they resort,
And coming to the nuns anon,
Each monk taketh to him one,
And, swiftly bearing forth his prey,
Carries her to the Abbey grey,
And teaches her an orison,
Jigging up and jigging down.
The monk that is a stallion good,
And can manage well his hood,
He shall have, without a doubt,
Twelve wives before the year is out,
All of right and nought through grace,
So he may himself solace.
And the monk that sleepeth best,
And gives his body ample rest,
He, God knows, may presently
Hope an Abbot for to be.
Whoso will come that land unto
Full great penance he must do,
He must wade for seven years
In the dirt a swine-pen bears,
Seven years right to the chin,
Ere he may hope that land to win.
Listen Lords, both good and kind,
Never will you that country find
Till through the ordeal you've gone
And that penance has been done.
So you may that land attain
And never more return again,
Pray to God that so it be,
Amen, by holy charity.
1. It proved impossible to give all these stones their modern names without wrecking the rhyme scheme. Uniune is pearl, Astiune, sapphire, Prassiune, chrysoprase, Topasiune, topaz, and Epetite, bloodstone.
General
Joyce Oramel Hertzler, The History of Utopian Thought (London, 1922).
Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (New York, 1923).
Paul Bloomfield, Imaginary Worlds (London, 1932).
Marie Louise Berneri, Journey Through Utopia (London, 1950).
Henry Morley, Ideal Commonwealths (London, 1885).
Part I
George Sampson (ed), The Cambridge Book of Prose and Verse: From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance (Cambridge, 1924) – for Land of Cokaygne.
EK Chambers, The Medieval Stage (two volumes, Oxford, 1903).
EK Chambers, The English Folk-Play (Oxford, 1933).
RJE Tiddy, The Mummers’ Play (Oxford, 1923).
S Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (London, 1866).
Benjamin Farrington, Head and Hand in Ancient Greece (London, 1947).
Joseph Hall, Mundus Alter et Idem (London, 1607, in Latin; translator John Healey, 1608).
Jean d'Outremeuse, Travels of Sir John Mandeville (many modern editions and translations).
Margaret Alice Murray, The Witch Cult in Western Europe (Oxford, 1921).
Part II
Sir Thomas More, Libellus vere Aureus nec Minus Salutaris quam festivus de optimo reipublicae statu deque nova Insula Utopia (Louvain, 1516).
Sir Thomas More, Utopia: Or the Best State of a Republique Weale (translated by Ralph Robinson, London, 1551).
Plato, The Republic (many English editions).
Frederic Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (London, 1869).
Karl Kautsky, Thomas More and His Utopia (Stuttgart, 1887, in German; English translation, London, 1927 [available on the MIA at < https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1888/more/index.htm >].
Russell Ames, Citizen Thomas More and His Utopia (Princetown, 1949).
HW Donner, Introduction to Utopia (London, 1945).
TE Hulme, Speculations (London, 1924).
Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London, 1946).
Part III
Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (London, 1627, in Latin; many English translations available).
Benjamin Farrington, Francis Bacon: Philosopher of Industrial Science (London, 1951).
Samuel Hartlib, A Description of the Famous Kingdom of Macaria (London, 1641, also in Harleian Miscellany).
GH Turnbull, Samuel Hartlib (Oxford, 1920).
John Sadler, Olbia: The New Island Lately Discovered (London, 1660).
Samuel Gott, Nova Solyma (London, 1648, in Latin; translated and edited by Walter Begley, two volumes, London, 1902).
James Harrington, Oceana (London, 1656).
James Harrington, The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, Esq (with Life by John Toland, London, 1700).
HF Russell Smith, Harrington and His Oceana (Cambridge, 1914).
New Atlantis, Begun by the Lord Verulam, Viscount St Albans and Continued by RH Esquire (London, 1660).
Henry Nevile, The Isle of Pines (London, 1668; also in Everyman Library, Shorter Novels, Volume 2).
Joseph Glanvill, ‘Anti-Fanatical Religion and Free Philosophy in a Continuation of the New Atlantis’, in Essays on Several Important Subjects (London, 1676).
Captain Siden (Denis Vairasse d'Allais), The History of the Sevarites or Severambi (London, 1675 and 1679).
Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (London, 1934).
ASP Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty (London, 1938).
Leonard Hamilton, Gerrard Winstanley: Selections From His Works (London, 1944).
DM Wolfe, Milton in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1941).
Part IV
Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner (London, 1719).
Jonathan Swift, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, By Lemuel Gulliver (London, 1726).
John Hayward (ed), Swift: Selected Writings in Prose and Verse (London, 1934).
Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moon, or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger (London, 1638, also in Harleian Miscellany).
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (London, 1668).
Simon Berington, The Memoirs of the Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca (London, 1738).
Robert Paltock, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (London, 1751).
Leslie Stephen, Swift (London, 1882).
Herbert Davis, The Satire of Jonathan Swift (New York, 1947).
Sir Charles Firth, ‘The Political Significance of Gulliver’s Travels’, in Essays Historical and Literary (Oxford, 1938).
Part V
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (London, 1793; second edition, much revised, 1796).
Geoffrey Keynes (ed), Poetry and Prose of William Blake (London, 1927).
Thomas Spence, Description of Spensonia (London, 1795).
Thomas Spence, The Constitution of Spensonia (London, 1801).
PA Brown, The French Revolution in English History (London, 1918).
HN Brailsford, Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle (London, 1913).
J Bronowski, A Man Without a Mask (London, 1944).
Friedrich Engels, Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Dühring) (1885, in German; English translation, London, 1935) [available on the MIA at < https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm >].
Mark Holloway, Heavens on Earth (London, 1951).
Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral World (London, 1836-44).
GDH Cole, The Life of Robert Owen (London, 1930).
Thomas Frost, Forty Years’ Recollections (London, 1880).
John Saville, Ernest Jones: Chartist (London, 1952).
Lord Lytton, The Coming Race (London, 1870).
Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or, Over the Range (London, 1872).
Samuel Butler, Erewhon Revisited (London, 1901).
Samuel Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement (London, 1863).
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (London, 1912).
GDH Cole, Samuel Butler (London, 1947).
HJ Massingham, ‘Samuel Butler and New Zealand’, Geographical Magazine (London), Volume 3, no 6, 1936.
Part VI
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (Boston, 1888).
Conrad Wilbrandt, Mr East’s Experience in Mr Bellamy’s World (translated by Mary J Safford, New York, 1891).
My Afterdream: A Sequel to the Late Mr Bellamy’s Looking Backward, by ‘Julian West’ (London, 1900).
Arthur E Morgan, Edward Bellamy (Columbia University Press, 1944).
William Morris, News From Nowhere (London, 1890) [available on the MIA at < https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1890/nowhere/index.htm >].
GDH Cole (ed), William Morris: Stories in Prose, Stories in Verse, Lectures and Essays (London, 1934).
JW Mackail, The Life of William Morris (two volumes, London, 1899).
R Page Arnot, William Morris: A Vindication (London, 1934) [available on the MIA at < https://www.marxists.org/archive/arnot-page/1934/03/morrisvindicated.htm >].
Richard Jefferies, After London (London, 1885).
WH Hudson, A Crystal Age (London, 1887).
Percy Greg, Across the Zodiac (two volumes, London, 1880).
Edmund Boisgilbert (Ignatius Donnelly), Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1890).
EW Fisk, Donnelliana (Chicago, 1892).
Theodor Hertzka, Freeland: A Social Anticipation (1890; English translation by Arthur Ransome, London, 1891).
Eugene Richter, Pictures of the Socialistic Future (English translation, London, 1893).
Ernest Bramah, What Might Have Been: The Story of a Social War (London, 1907).
Jack London, The Iron Heel (New York, 1907).
Part VII
HG Wells When the Sleeper Wakes (London, 1892).
HG Wells, The First Men in the Moon (London, 1901).
HG Wells, A Modern Utopia (London, 1905).
HG Wells, The New Machiavelli (London, 1911).
HG Wells, The World Set Free (London, 1914).
HG Wells, Men Like Gods (London, 1922).
HG Wells, Things to Come (London, 1935).
HG Wells, Mind at the End of Its Tether (London, 1945).
GK Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (London, 1904).
EM Forster, The Eternal Moment (London, 1928).
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (London, 1932).
Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence (London, 1948).
Lord Samuel, An Unknown Land (London, 1942).
Rose Macaulay, Orphan Island (London, 1924).
James Hilton, Lost Horizon (London, 1933).
Dennis Wheatley, They Found Atlantis (London, 1936).
G Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah (London, 1921).
JBS Haldane, Possible Worlds (London, 1927).
Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (London, 1930).
Joseph O'Neill, Land Under England (London, 1935).
Murray Constantine, Swastika Night (London, 1937).
Herbert Read, The Green Child (London, 1935).
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London, 1949).